After the New York Times bombshell that Donald Trump ordered White House counsel Don McGahn to arrange for special
counsel Robert Mueller to be fired but McGahn refused, the Washington Postconfirmed
the story and so did
CNN.
At this point, there is almost no doubt that Trump did try and fail to get rid of Mueller last June, even though Trump denied it yesterday.
So the next question is: "Who leaked the story?" followed by
"Why did McGahn refuse to carry out Trump's order?"

We don't know who was the leaker, but this is not the kind of thing that gets discussed in cabinet meetings.
Most likely, Trump simply called McGahn into the Oval Office and gave him the order. There is a pretty good chance
that only a handful of people knew about it, with McGahn a strong candidate for being the leaker. But why was the information leaked? Jeremy Stahl at Slate
has several theories:

McGahn wanted a huge firestorm to prevent Trump from trying again, since he (McGahn) knows the consequences

Possibly McGahn was signaling Mueller that he is willing to cooperate, although this is a bit far-fetched

Steve Bannon might have known and has plenty of reasons to want to damage Trump

And then we get to the question: "Why would McGahn, a long-time Republican lawyer, want to save Mueller?"
Some possibilities:

McGahn might have thought that firing Mueller would lead to certain impeachment and conviction

He might have thought we would get a constitutional crisis that could be unmanageable

McGahn might actually believe in the rule of law and not want to go down in history as the villain in this story

He might have been afraid that if he did it, some day he would be indicted for obstruction of justice

We don't know now but maybe we will some day. One thing for sure is that when the movie of this sordid affair is made some
years hence, McGahn won't be played by Robert Redford because Redford is 81 and McGahn is 49. (V)

James Hohmann at the Washington Post has
five takeaways
from this still-developing story:

The botched firing helps Mueller: Robert Mueller is certainly examining a possible obstruction of justice charge against Donald Trump
but that requires proving a "corrupt intent." There is no smoking gun, as far as we know, but as the pieces fall into place, the case gets stronger.
Trump told former FBI Director James Comey to lay off Flynn, then he fired
Comey, then he tried to fire Mueller. It all adds up. The fact that McGahn threatened to resign probably means McGahn thought Trump wanted
to obstruct justice and he didn't want to play a role in it.

No reporter will believe anything from the White House any more:
Last August, when asked if he was considering firing Mueller, Trump said he hadn't thought about it. That was a flat-out lie.
Also in August, Kellyanne Conway told ABC's George Stephanopoulos: "The president is not discussing firing Bob Mueller."
Another lie.
Trump's lawyer John Dowd answered a question in August about Trump firing Mueller and said: "This has never been on the table."
False.
In December, another Trump lawyer, Ty Cobb, said:
"As the White House has consistently said for months, there is no consideration of firing the special counsel."
Clearly not true.
The credibility of everyone close to Trump is now basically zero.

Congress might think about protecting Mueller:
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and multiple Democrats sponsored a bill last year to protect Mueller, basically by stripping the
Justice Dept. of the authority to fire Mueller and giving it to the courts, and then only for just cause.
The bill went nowhere, but the sponsors might revive it now that it is clearly needed.
However, the
first reaction
of the Republican leadership in Congress was to shrug the whole thing off.

McGahn showed that staffers can say "no" to Trump:
McGahn is no hero given some of the other things he has done, but he can be a role model for other White House staffers who
are confronted with a clearly illegal order. They can refuse and Trump might well back down rather than fire the person and
have to endure a media firestorm.

Managing Trump is a Herculean task:
Chief of Staff John Kelly is trying very hard to manage Trump but it isn't easy.
He has cut off many people from seeing Trump, reduced the number of issues he brings to Trump, and tried to limit Trump's access
to people or ideas that might cause him to make a blunder. Trump often sits in his office alone, because Kelly has blocked
everyone else from entering. This is one of the reasons Trump has so much "executive time" in the residence: to be free of
Kelly's restrictions.

One thing that this whole incident brings up is the basic question: "Why is Trump trying so hard to stop Mueller?"
What is he afraid Mueller might discover? If Trump were accused of having a private email server, like you-know-who, he would
surely cooperate to the fullest since he would be confident that the final report would exonerate him completely. The thing he is
very worried about might be collusion with the Russians, but it could also be something else, like extensive money laundering
in the past. For example, after the U.S. banks cut him off, he might have gotten loans from Russian banks, but why would they
take risks that U.S. banks wouldn't? Did he promise to launder money for them as part of the deal? Whatever it is, Trump is
clearly nervous about something Mueller might discover. (V)

Donald Trump is prone to angry outbursts. He's very anxious about Russiagate.
He likes to fire people (or, at least, have people fired on his behalf).
Consequently, nobody with even a vague connection to the Mueller investigation
should let their resume get out of date. The
latest
target of The Donald's ire: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is
the direct supervisor of Mueller, thanks to Attorney General Jeff Sessions'
having recused himself from the Russia investigation. According to numerous
White House sources, the president regularly muses about firing the DAG, and has
to be talked out of it by those who observe it wouldn't accomplish anything.

The advisors are certainly right about that, though "wouldn't accomplish
anything" doesn't quite do it justice. Getting rid of Rosenstein, replacing him,
and then getting the replacement to fire Mueller would be a tenuous process and,
at this point, Congress might step in anyhow and stop Trump from trying.

Until a successor to Rosenstein is approved by the Senate, Assistant Attorney General Rachel Brand would be in charge of Mueller.
She is 44 and has been apppointed to high office by George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump.
She is clearly extremely good and no doubt envisions a long career in law enforcement. She knows very well that firing Mueller
would be the end of her promising career and would almost certainly resign rather than wield the hatchet, increasing the
ferocity of the storm.

Meanwhile, if Don McGahn was willing to resign to protect Mueller, then
presumably firing Rosenstein would also trigger a resignation from McGahn, and from other
counsel (and staff) as well. Then, there would be massive political fallout, not
to mention another piece of evidence for Mueller's obstruction case.

Given these downsides, Rosenstein probably doesn't need to be too nervous
about losing his job. That said, the President has fired an FBI director in
James Comey and threatened to fire Sessions, Rosenstein, and Mueller on numerous
occasions, while also trying to get Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe to
resign. If the President's advisors manage to keep him from lopping anyone's
head off, and to allow the investigation to run its course, then they will be
earning their salaries, indeed. (Z)

When Donald Trump faces Robert Mueller in a few weeks, Mueller could really put Trump in the hot seat by having an
FBI agent present ask Trump a simple
six-word question:
"Did you try to fire Mueller?"
If Trump says "yes," he is on the hook for obstruction of justice.
If he says "no," the charge could be lying to an FBI agent.
If he says he doesn't remember, the talk about the 25th Amendment will be the news of the day.
There is no easy way out for Trump if he gets asked this. (V)

In his carefully-prepared speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Donald Trump was
calm and coherent
and reassured everyone that they need not fear him. After the speech, he took a couple of questions and the real Trump came out.
He attacked Hillary Clinton, boasted how good he was at building things, and attacked the press as fake.
The audience groaned at that. The planned boycott of his speech did not materialize, but the only applause came from the first rows, where
Trump's staff and guests were seated.

The general take on his performance is that he met the extremely low expectations but is clearly unaware how low
"Brand America" is sinking in the world. One thing that the business leaders did genuinely appreciate is the huge corporate
tax cut passed into law last year, although surely all of them realize that the person who gets the credit for that is
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), not Trump. (V)

The one-page immigration plan Trump released yesterday is running into
powerful headwinds.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called it the wish list that anti-immigrant hardliners have advocated for years.
Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) panned it as well.

Surprisingly, so did many on the right.
Rep. Steve King (R-IA) said: "Illegals have no right to be here & have ALL violated our laws."
Freedom Caucus member Rep. Scott Desjarlais (R-OH) said:
"There should be no amnesty for anyone who broke the law to come here."
Heritage Action called it a nonstarter because it "expands the amnesty-eligible population."
In short, the plan has some rough sledding ahead if it is to become law. (V)

While Harvey Weinstein is a liberal Democrat and Steve Wynn is a conservative
Republican, the two men have a fair bit in common. They're both iconic figures
in the entertainment industry, and dominant players in their respective
hometowns (Los Angeles and Las Vegas). They both collect fine art, and have more
money than they can spend in dozens of lifetimes. They even have very similar
names, since Wynn's real last name is Weinberg. But the only connection that
people will think of from here on out is that they are both incorrigible leches
who spent decades taking advantage of vulnerable women. This week, Wynn's
misdeeds
were laid out in great detail by the Wall Street Journal. The list reads
exactly like the one we saw for Weinstein a few months ago: compulsory naked
massages, masturbation in front of unwilling women, sex under duress (that is,
rape), and so on.

Politically, this is bad news for the GOP. Recall, first of all, this
tweet from the RNC back in October:

The Weinstein scandal put Hollywood’s hypocrisy in broad daylight. RT if you agree the DNC should return his donations.

Chagrined by this, and other such pointed observations, Democratic
politicians and the DCCC did indeed return Weinstein's money, while the DNC
donated his contributions to charities that help abused women. While Wynn has
donated to both parties, as is common for billionaires (including Donald Trump),
he has overwhelmingly favored the Republicans. That means the GOP
will have to
give back that money, or else look very hypocritical. But it gets worse,
because—unlike Weinstein—Wynn is an RNC functionary. Specifically,
he is the Party's current finance chairman. That means that he's linked, on some level,
to every single dollar the GOP has raised since he assumed that post in early
2017. They are obviously not going to return a whole year's worth of
fundraising, so they will be even further exposed to pointed observations about
how serious the Party is about sexual abuse of women. As if they were not
already in enough difficulty on that front, given their support for Roy Moore,
as well as pu**ygate, and all of the GOP members of Congress who have been compelled to
retire—Pat Meehan (R-PA), Blake Farenthold (R-TX), Joe Barton (R-TX),
etc.—but chose not to resign, in contrast to Democrats Al Franken and John
Conyers Jr.

Speaking of the Democrats, they too had
some bad news
on the sexual misconduct front on Friday. Burns Strider, who served in 2008 as
Hillary Clinton's faith adviser, also turns out to be a lech. Not at the Wynn/Weinstein
level, but he is plausibly accused of unwanted touching and inappropriate
e-mails. Clinton was warned about his behavior—which continued at, and
cost him, his next job—and she chose not to fire Strider (though she did
dock his pay, send him to counseling, and transfer his victim away from him). Not good, of
course, but the news is likely to get drowned out by the much more serious, and
much more salacious, Wynn coverage. Plus, Clinton is not a current Democratic
functionary, and Strider has been effectively exiled from the Party for years.
So, the Democrats took considerably less damage on this front this week than did
the Republicans. (Z)

Not the usual kind of war the State Department deals with. They're pretty
good at those, give or take the occasional Vietnam. No, this one is more of a
civil war, and
pits
the folks who currently lead the Department—particularly Secretary of
State Rex Tillerson—against the career staffers within the department.

It is not a secret that the Trump administration has a low opinion of the
State Department in general, and of Obama-era appointees and projects in
particular. A pretty clear pattern has now emerged wherein key Obama-era players
are being given menial or mundane tasks, presumably with an eye towards causing
them to quit (it's not easy to fire government employees). For example, Ian Moss
has compiled a sterling record during his five-plus years at State; his last
evaluation described him as a "SUPERSTAR" and lauded his "brilliant" advice to
two U.S. presidents. He is now handling Freedom of Information Act requests and
doing data entry. Those are jobs usually performed by people 10 or more levels
below his rank of GS-14.

This is yet another case of the Trump administration failing to anticipate the
consequences of their actions, because Moss and several other staffers have
hired counsel and are preparing to sue. So, it's another needless headache for
Team Trump, and whatever money they save on departed staffers is going to go to
paying government lawyers. Unfortunately for the State Department, there are
already some long-time staffers who have bowed to pressure and thrown in the
towel, and undoubtedly others who will follow. Those folks won't be easy to
replace whenever the U.S. next elects a non-"America First" president. (Z)